Frank Pearce labels WoW's success as "exhausting"
by Alex Ziebart 
Sep 2nd 2008 at 8:30AM
GamesIndustry.biz recently had an opportunity to chat with Frank Pearce, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, about World of Warcraft and their other properties. At the Games Convention in Leipzig, Pearce was asked if he found WoW's performance since launch interesting to watch. He doesn't quite say no, but he doesn't say yes, either. "I don't know if I'd describe it as 'interesting' as much as exhausting," he says. He goes on to detail just how much the company has grown, up to 3000 employees worldwide, with 130 people on the WoW development team trying to sate our 'voracious appetite for content.' World of Warcraft is almost directly responsible for that growth.Pearce talks a bit about Blizzard's other franchises and projects, specifically Starcraft II and Battle.net, suggesting a brave new world where World of Warcraft players could crack out a quick 15-20 minute multiplayer round in Starcraft II while waiting for their WoW raid. That sounds like an awesome time to me, but perhaps that's a little too much Blizzard in one evening for most folks. Then again, maybe not!
After a brief exchange about how Blizzard Entertainment manages to build so much hype about new games and releases, Pearce is questioned on Blizzard adding any new IPs to their stable, to which he responds with yet more of the Blizzard jig. Pearce states that it would be a lot of work, but the deciding factor is what the development teams want to do. That's something that I find really interesting. After Diablo III, could the Diablo team decide they wanted to do Magical Unicorns in Space and get away with it?
I definitely recommend reading the full interview, especially if you're interested in what Blizzard does as a company beyond World of Warcraft. It gives a nice little glimpse into how Blizzard operates as a company nowadays.
[ Thanks, Centipede! ]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Feanora Sep 2nd 2008 8:42AM
8000 employees? It says 3000 in the interview.
Alex Ziebart Sep 2nd 2008 9:12AM
Fixed. Brain fart. Thanks!
F0REM4N Sep 2nd 2008 11:46AM
Whaaaa! /cry
My maultybillion dollar company is a lot of work, whoa is me.
Nick S Sep 2nd 2008 8:43AM
I, for one, can't wait for Magical Unicorns in Space.
Culhag Sep 2nd 2008 8:51AM
You made a typo, the article says 3000 employees, not 8000.
Athmeno Sep 2nd 2008 8:53AM
3,000 employees and only 130 on the dev team?
Sounds like the NHS ratio of managers to beds.
Cal Sep 2nd 2008 9:20AM
Well all the GMs you contact in the game would be counted as employees, along with all the technicians who work on the servers and whatnot. They'd need a fair few people for that.
And 130 people is very large for a dev team on just one project.
Zali Sep 2nd 2008 9:23AM
Sounds about right. It takes a lot of people to keep the dev teams afloat. People to deal with payroll, people to clean toilets, people to do desktop support, people to deal with servers, people to deal with printers, people to run the mail room, people to run the cafeteria, people to fix elevators, people stock paper in the copy machines, and people to handle the people. Lots of people.
Dabura Sep 2nd 2008 9:55AM
LOL. So sad and true thou :(
Candina@WH Sep 2nd 2008 9:52AM
OK, as a worker in the healthcare world, I am trying (unsuccessfully) to not be annoyed by this remark.
We are a not-for-profit hospital in the mid-west. We employ over 5000 employees. We employ 1 nurse manager and two shift leads per nursing area. Basically 3 supervisors/managers per 25 beds. While this may seem high It is not so high when you consider that this represents one supervisor on each of three daily and weekend shifts. Studies show that having no-one in a supervisory capacity increases errors. And these are peoples lives we're talking about.
So, unless your gonna risk YOUR life by cutting that 'over-head', lay off, please. :-)
Thomolithic Sep 2nd 2008 10:59AM
Seriously, chill the hell out. I'm pretty sure it was a joke.
benicrystal Oct 27th 2008 5:12PM
so ur a nurse
k
krashnark Sep 2nd 2008 12:52PM
Zali
"people to fix elevators"
Probably outsource for that one and maybe some of the other things your line of thinking is going.
gton Sep 2nd 2008 2:21PM
what hes trying to say, is that he isnt excited about the succes of wow, it really seems he would be more excited by som cult underground simple game.. the problem is he wouldnt be very excited by his paycheck then i guess, more "exhausted".. Just get a job somplace else then
Candina@WH Sep 2nd 2008 2:41PM
130 Developers is significant. I wonder how many QA/Testers?
If I had to guess, the single largest, and most expensive, part of the payroll is Server and Network support.
Each Realm has 3-4 servers(clusters?). One for each continent, Outlands and the Island. I don't know how the instances run, but I would guess that there is an instance server/cluster.
Each battlegroup has a collection of Battleground servers.
The website has a cluster of servers.
There is/are cluster(s) of database servers.
And networking across Three continental zones.
Not including battle.net.